Read full description of the books The Vatican Rip:

Or "The One Where Lovejoy Steals A Table".

I'm slowly working my way through the Lovejoy books, having read a couple when I was much younger and the TV show was still a thing. This is, I think, the fifth in the series and, by now, we're used to Lovejoy's ways which are, as the books are like thirty years old, quite dated.

He's still quite big on hitting women, though. He's really living up to his "Chris Brown of the Antiques World" label I gave him several books ago. This time, by 40% of the way through, he's hit two women - one of them, to all intents and purposes, an old woman. By the time the book closes, he's managed to get in at least four solid hits on a variety of womenfolk.

It's almost a wonder he has time to even think about stealing that table.

Read information about the author

John Grant is an English crime writer, who writes under the pen name Jonathan Gash. He is the author of the Lovejoy series of novels. He wrote the novel The Incomer under the pen name Graham Gaunt.

Grant is a doctor by training and worked as a general practitioner and pathologist. He served in the British Army and attained the rank of Major in the Royal Army Medical Corps. He was head of bacteriology at the School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine for the University of London between 1971 and 1988.

Grant won the John Creasey Award in 1977 for his first Lovejoy novel, The Judas Pair. He is also the author of a series of medical thrillers featuring the character Dr. Clare Burtonall.

Grant lives outside Colchester in Essex, the setting for many of his novels. He has also been published in Postscripts.